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Ether trading product details

1 Ether markets close at 10pm on Friday night (UK time), then reopen on Saturday at 4am (UK time).

2 Professional clients are exempt from regulatory limits on leverage in place for retail clients, and are able to trade on lower margins as a result. You can find out more, and check your eligibility, on our professional trading page.

Please note that in times of high volatility, our minimum spreads can increase significantly.

Our annualised overnight funding rate is currently 0.055% for all cryptocurrency markets (20% per annum). At present, clients with a long position will pay this overnight funding rate, while clients with a short position will receive on the overnight funding rate. In addition, a 7.5% per-annum IG admin fee will also apply.

What will this mean for my positions?

If you are long, you will pay an annualised overnight funding charge of 0.0764% a day (27.5% per-annum) for any position that is open at 10pm (UK time).

If you are short, you will receive an annualised overnight funding charge of 0.0347% a day (12.5% per-annum) for any position that is open at 10pm (UK time).

Please note that for any position held through 10pm (London time), we’ll make a daily interest credit or debit adjustment Monday to Sunday. Adjustments to the number of days charged will be made in advance of the Christmas and New Year holidays, to cover settlement of trades over these bank holidays.

Given the high demand and price increases, we may restrict any new orders to buy or sell cryptocurrency, both online and over the telephone.

As we hedge client exposure in the underlying market, our interests are aligned with yours. However, due to the various risks and complexity involved in trading underlying cryptocurrencies, there's a limit to the total amount of physical cryptocurrency we can hold as a business. We therefore need to reflect this by limiting the exposure that each client is allowed to maintain through CFDs and spread bets. This limit is currently £250,000 notional (or equivalent) per client across all cryptocurrency holdings. Any client with a notional size above this limit is at risk of having their cryptocurrency positions reduced.

Sometimes our platform won't allow you to open a new long position on ether. This happens when we reach our maximum exposure in the market. You'll be able to open a position when our trading volume changes.

Please note this should not affect your ability to close any existing open positions, provided this does not increase or create net long exposure.

You can check whether or not our ether markets are 'unlongable' in the platform. In IG Trading, click the 'information' icon in the deal ticket, then select 'other'. In the classic platform, click on your market's dropdown and select 'get info'. Please refresh your browser for the latest updates.

IG policy on blockchain forks

We base the price of our cryptocurrency products on the underlying market, made available to us by the exchanges and market-makers with which we trade.

There is currently one accepted decentralised ledger which records all bitcoin transactions – as well as an equivalent for ether – called the blockchain. When the software of different miners becomes misaligned, a split – or 'fork' – in the blockchain may occur. This results in the existence of two different blockchains.

Generally, cryptocurrency users quickly agree which version to continue to use, causing minimal disruption. The old version of the blockchain is then discontinued.

In the event that one version isn't discontinued – known as a hard fork – we will generally follow the blockchain that has the majority consensus of cryptocurrency users, and will therefore use this as the basis for our prices. We reserve the right to determine which blockchain and cryptocurrency unit have the majority consensus behind them.

If the hard fork results in a viable second cryptocurrency, we may create an equivalent position on client accounts to reflect this. However this action is at our absolute discretion, and we will have no obligation to do so. If, and when, the second cryptocurrency is tradeable on a major exchange, we will endeavour to represent that value. We’ll do this either by making the product available to close based on the valuation on that venue, or by booking a cash adjustment on client accounts. If, within a reasonable timeframe, the second currency does not become tradeable on major exchanges or is otherwise deemed not to be viable as a currency (for example, it is not mined), we may delete any positions that had previously been created at no value on client accounts. We will take steps to notify you when we have taken this action.

When a hard fork occurs, there may be substantial price volatility around the event, and we may suspend trading throughout if we do not have reliable prices from the underlying market.

We will endeavour to notify you of potential blockchain forks, however it is your responsibility to make yourself aware of the forks that could occur.

Contact us

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. All trading involves risk.

CFD, accounts provided by IG Markets Ltd. IG is a trading name of IG Markets Ltd (a company registered in England and Wales under number 04008957). Registered address at Cannon Bridge House, 25 Dowgate Hill, London EC4R 2YA. IG Markets Ltd (Register number 195355) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

The information on this site is not directed at residents of the United States or Belgium and is not intended for distribution to, or use by, any person in any country or jurisdiction where such distribution or use would be contrary to local law or regulation.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 79% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider.You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money. CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage.